HUMAN SELECTION. 93 



largest ward, and from that position to point ont every patient 

 therein who had been taking stimulants for three or four days at 

 least, and I succeeded. To me the pale worn aspect of the patient 

 is unmistakable. 



With this I end my paper. It is not for me to go into statis- 

 tics on the point, such as may be found, I dare say, in books or 

 hospital reports. I know that such statistics are scant, for the 

 question has not yet become a matter of calm scientific investiga- 

 tion. It is still one of the " fads " of the day, which the practical 

 physician has not time to trouble about. Nevertheless, the re- 

 form is irresistibly advancing. No one can overlook the unmis- 

 takable diminution of the consumption of alcoholic liquors in 

 hospitals. This is probably due in great measure to the greater 

 temperance of the general community a change of fashion rather 

 than a reform of practice. It has been said long ago that the 

 evils wrought by a theory have never in history discredited the 

 theory ; and certainly this would seem to be true in the practice 

 of medicine. The melancholy history of the use of calomel and 

 of opium in India is a saddening illustration. A few men here 

 and there question the theory, and gain adherents chiefly among 

 the young. The older men are not so much converted. They die 

 out, and by and by the world awakes and exclaims how foolish 

 the last generation was. 



HUMAN SELECTION. 



By ALFKED EUSSEL WALLACE. 



IN one of my latest conversations with Darwin he expressed 

 himself very gloomily on the future of humanity, on the 

 ground that in our modern civilization natural selection had no 

 play, and the fittest did not survive. Those who succeed in the 

 race for wealth are by no means the best or the most intelligent, 

 and it is notorious that our population is more largely renewed in 

 each generation from the lower than from the middle and upper 

 classes. As a recent American writer well puts it, " We behold 

 the melancholy spectacle of the renewal of the great mass of so- 

 ciety from the lowest classes, the highest classes to a great extent 

 either not marrying or not having children. The floating popula- 

 tion is always the scum, and yet the stream of life is largely 

 renewed from this source. Such a state of affairs, sufficiently 

 dangerous in any society, is simply suicidal in the democratic 

 civilization of our day." * 



That the check to progress here indicated is a real one few will 



* Hiram M. Stanley, in the Arena for June, 1890. 



